This is a thread for people to post reviews of Halloweeny games made in Clickteam's tools and to provide retrospectives providing behind-the-scenes of games that people have themselves made or helped make. It can be a text-based review, illustrated, or even video if you like!
Please also post a copy of reviews to the games entry on The Daily Click or Kliktopia as appropriate where possible. Also, provide a link to where the game can be found.
I'll start things off, first with a retrospective then with some partially recycled reviews of some particularly great Halloween games I've played over the years (with a focus on the positives of why people should check out these games).
Retrospective: Swipe-o'-Lantern
Author description: "Swipe your mouse to launch your pumpkin across the screen to collect as many candies as you can before the timer runs out. Hit anything too hard: YOU EXPLODE! Hit the bomb that looks like an orb: YOU EXPLODE! Run out of time: YOU EXPLODE! Hint: For a long life, please try to avoid exploding."
I made this game for the Fusionween 2024 Game Jam hosted by Toby Davis, which had no theme other than Halloween.
Having no specific theme I decided to focus on re-using my swiping mechanic from an unfinished game I had made. That game used it for a 2D platformer, but I wanted to try it for a more top-down style. This resulted in me thinking of tying it into Halloween through a piņata mechanic which gave the player candy when they hit the objects. Doing just this seemed too easy, so I also made one of the objects a bomb which you did NOT want to hit as well as killing the player if they hit things too hard.
I then tied it together using my hi-score system and added in some feedback to players when they lost inspired by Behead Reanimated. I also added the ability to get more time which gave people some strategy in choosing between getting more time and using the time they had to get more points - I spent quite a lot of time on how much time to give. Some day I hope to make this a mobile game given it uses a swiping mechanic.
I'm not sure if I got the difficulty right as I mostly did the play-testing myself and by the end I had gotten quite good at using the right level of force. If I were to make the game again I would probably have an easy mode and a hard mode as many people seemed to find it a bit tricky.
As someone who usually spends way too long working on games and never finishing them, it was great to have an incentive to actually get a game out there and the competition was a great conduit for this.
Author description:: "It's Halloween eve's. You need to give candy to kids as always but you know something will come through the darkness."
I really like the look and feel to this game, which feels very spooky while also being a rather creative homage to Five Nights at Freddy's.
There is so much to like about this game. The menu screen is top notch and fits in well with the theme of the game. The story and instructions are nicely integrated into the game. The graphics and audio are well done (the voice effects reminded me of Stray and it really fits) and the stats at the end were handy. The challenges add to the game's re-playability. Definitely the spookiest game in the contest - nice work!
Author description: "This game does exactly what it says on the tin, allowing you to... behead yourself. In this bone-rattling adventure, you play as a headless skeleton, dubbed 'The Fleshless' by the nefarious vampire lord/terrible punster Dragh Kyllah. Forever confined to his idle frames, Dragh Kyllah is envious of the Fleshless' ability to have different animations. You must combat the salty bloodsucker's countless minions, including zombies, bats, goblins, and ghosts, and eventually, the man himself. But you also come prepared, albeit against your will, as various objects are hexed to become your surrogate head/weapon..."
There is a lot to love about this game. It oozes creativity, from its fun sense of humour (in its name, sound effects, storyline and even how it hangs a lantern on why the antagonist is not animated) to the variety of the enemies and weapons and how they interact. The level design is fairly plain, but the variety in platform positions and methods of getting between the platform make a virtue out of the simplicity, which makes good use of the different vertical spaces for different elements of the gameplay.
The enemies and the whole premise is very Halloweeny, and it certainly has boss battles galore with its main antagonist. It does a good job of layering up the elements as you replay it, helping keep the player engaged. No individual element is overly complicated, but when it all gets added together it makes for a game which can be quite challenging at the higher levels. There's a fair bit of trial and error in learning the best strategies, with the tips shown when you die helping you master the game.
The music, chosen by the author from the back catalogue of a music group he is is part of, works very well and adds to the theme - see https://overheaven.bandcamp.com/ for Over Heaven Production. The homemade graphics and sometimes homemade sound effects also fit with the feel of the game. There is plenty of replay value, from the increasing selection of weapons to the need to continue to adapt your approach to match the game getting harder. It is good that you can resume from where you left off or replay earlier elements as it can allow for the game to be completed over multiple sessions and replayed at your chosen difficulty.
If the author hadn't told me himself I would never have guessed this was his first platform game. His six years of developing other games really paid off to make it quite the genre debut.
In conclusion, this is a very solid and imaginative game with polished gameplay that benefits from clear attention to detail. It succeeds in realising its vision and, perhaps most importantly, I found it really fun to (re-)play. An A+ submission, I give it a 9/10.
Author description: "It's the Halloween season once again, and little Billy is going trick-or-treating. After going through house to house for candy, he stumbles upon a mysterious house with an old man living there. He tells Billy about these magical candies known as the 4 Mystical Candies and that with every single one you eat, you get granted one wish. Meanwhile, a scientist kid named Franken heard the news that Billy got a hold of the 4 Mystical Candies, so he sends four of his monster minions (which are based off classic monster movies) into the neighborhood in search of Billy. While Billy was walking through the neighborhood park, Franken's monsters came out of nowhere, gave Billy a good scare, and take the candy from him. With his state of the art Turf Dart Gun, it's up to Billy to go after those monsters and recover the 4 Mystical Candies. Are you up for the task?"
A fun start with the story that gets the most out of BigAl's trademark cartoony style, and the later cut scenes are also fun. Both the story and character names have a sense of creative fun that match the art style. It very much fulfils the bill of having Halloween boss battles, and each boss manages to be reasonably unique, often with movements and attacks that theme in nicely with the monster and thus makes sense. The reward you get when you defeat the boss adds a nice reward, and gives people a reason to replay a boss fight. The controls were clear and the interface was easy to use. The use of an overworld map and shop made it easy to choose levels and to level up using a fitting old school interface.
It is a 7/10 due to its inconsistent difficulty curve and lack of 'fairness', but has the potential to be elevated to an 8/10.
Author description: "The three witches have forgotten to take their medicine. Your task is to give it to them and cure their mental instability before they destroy the world."
The gameplay is well thought through with a good amount of signposting for what is going to happen to impact the world and it builds up both the weapons and the threats in a gradual manner to prevent the player from getting overwhelmed. This means the game is about situational awareness rather than simply luck or fast reaction times, although the procedural generation does sometimes mean you are at the mercy of the randomness of the game, waiting around for a while with nothing obvious to do to progress the game (especially in the first level before you get more of the weapons which provide more options). I like how you simply lose life when you touch water instead of it being instadeath. In some cases the level seemed to get harder the longer it went on, and so it seemed easier to die and start again. Fun graphics, gameplay and music combine to make a nice little game and the fact it was made in only 72 hours is impressive.
Advertisement
Post Reply
Edited by an Administrator
Joshtek
GO! 
Download: 
Fusion 2024 competition entries: